I Think I Might Have Inhaled You
by Kristybelle
Summary: Set directly after 3x22, so spoilers for entire series so far. The buzzing in Damon's head is unbearable.
1. Chapter 1

The buzzing in Damon's head is unbearable.

Alaric is dead. Therefore, Elena is dead.

Before, when he felt even the slightest bit like this, he'd find a distraction, find a bottle of ridiculously expensive bourbon, find some beautiful, empty headed girl and fuck her senseless before he drained her dry. He'd hunt like the animal he was, fuck like the playboy everyone believed him to be, and he would just not be for a while. He'd own the buzzing in his head, fill it with another buzz of lust and murder and alcohol.

Now, Damon can think of nothing but getting to her, holding her limp ragdoll body in his arms, kissing her cold, dry lips. He can think only of getting to her before Stefan does, because if he walks into the morgue and Stefan is holding her, Damon thinks he might kill him. He thinks he might not be able to help himself. He loves his brother, but the idea of Stefan having her now, holding her now, after he's had her all this time...it makes him want to howl. Damon remembers her body molded to his, her soft, warm tongue in his mouth. Stefan had Elena for a year. That should seem like such a brief time to a vampire, but to Damon, it felt like a lifetime. Thirty seconds. Maybe a minute. She had been Damon's that brief, brief instant at the hotel, and she would be his now. In death, she should be his.

The trip back is long and hard. Damon feels her death in him like a thousand beehives, feel his black, dead heart pounding and pounding with unsaid, unfelt grief. He is struggling for breath, rolling down all the windows for dry, dead air that seems to have had all the oxygen sucked out of it.

At the hospital, everyone stares at him. He knows he looks wild eyed and frightening, knows he looks like a predator that has been kicked and abused and backed into a corner, and they are right to be afraid. He'll murder anyone who stands between him and the sweet, dead girl he had so loved.

The doctor, Meredith, poor Alaric's girl of the week, is telling him something, telling him as if it's important, as if anything's important now that Elena is gone, and her words barely penetrate the beehive in his head.

"...helped her," He hears, and it snaps him back to the world.

Suddenly, his heart fills with hope so quickly that he feels it might explode from his chest, and he places a hand on the doctor's shoulder for support.

"Thank God," he bursts out hoarsely, without even knowing he was saying it, maybe believing in God for the first time in a century, because Elena isn't gone. Not quite alive, maybe, but walking and talking and smiling, and he is so grateful that he wants to get down on his knees and kiss Meredith's sensible white shoes.

"I thought you might want to wait for Stefan," she says, quietly, and Damon shakes his head violently, dropping his hand from her shoulder.

"I want to see her right now. I'd suggest you not try to stop me."

Meredith nods, in defeat, and gives him a room number.

He is walking away before she finishes giving him the last digit, and he is at Elena's bedside in moments, maybe seconds.

Her eyes are closed, of course, her eyelashes fanned out over her high, perfect cheekbones, and he watches her for what seems like hours. Meredith comes in once, but only tells him Stefan is on his way. Damon nods, waves her away, impatiently, because he can't take his eyes off Elena's too-still face. He's waiting for her to open those honey brown eyes, to look at him with fear or disgust, because he couldn't care less what she thought when she woke up, only that she did wake up. Part of him is still afraid that she won't, that she hadn't gotten enough vampire blood, that she'll just lie there, dead and still. If that was the case, Damon is sure he will sit there with her for days, until Stefan comes in and tries to drag him away, and then Damon would fight tooth and nail to stay, maybe force his brother to stake him. Damon will not move from this spot until Elena takes her first breath as an undead.

FInally, an eternity later, Elena wakes, struggling for breath, vaulting up on the bed, and Damon stands, hovers above her for a moment, waiting until her brown eyes lock on his blue ones, waiting for the spark of recognition.

Warmth and light flow over her death-muddled eyes and Damon's breath stops when she smiles at him. His heart stutters in his chest, and he thinks he might pass out until her little hand gropes out for his. At the touch of her skin, clammy and cold but still baby soft, still Elena, he takes in a deep, lung burning breath and leans over her, placing an unsteady hand on her face.

Elena smiles at him again, places her other hand over his on her cheek, and laughs. "Damon," she says, her voice hoarse but achingly, wonderfully familiar, "you're shaking all over. I was the one who drowned, not you!"

Damon tries to make some flippant comment, tries to give her a nonchalant smile, but the last few hours have been too much. He can no longer pretend he's holding it together. His legs give out and he sits down hard on the hospital chair beside her bed, still holding her hand in a death grip, and for the first time in what seems like a century, he begins to cry.


	2. Chapter 2

Damon has never felt so small in his entire life.

He remembers being a boy, holding his father's hand as his father shouldered his way through the mob watching a hanging at the gallows. He remembers his father saying "Don't look, Damon, it's not for little eyes," and he remembers trying to look anyway, but being too small, not able to see over the horde of people that his father was breaking through. All Damon could see was dirty breeches and stomping feet, but his father's hand is strong, tugging him along. He'd felt small, then, insignificant, but nothing like this.

Nothing like sitting at Elena's bedside, unable to let go of her hand even as she struggled weakly to sit up, unable to look up at her, hot tears streaming down his face. Everything in him told him to pull it together, to help her, to tell her everything will be okay, but his throat is closed up and he's hitching in sobbing breaths like a child during a tantrum. He can't do anything because for the last horrible six hours, Elena has been dead, and it has been unbearable. The feel of her hand in his, the sound of her breathing, her heart beating sluggishly, makes him feel like there's broken glass in his chest, and he's so tired from his grief that he can't lift his head.

"Damon," Elena is saying, and her voice changing from that lilting, flirty tone to concern makes him suck it up and look at her. He tries to smile, and he knows it must be some horrible ghost of his usual grin based on the furrow in Elena's pretty brow.

"Finally," he says, his voice unsteady but growing stronger, "I thought you would never wake up."

"Damon," Elena says again, and before he knows it she's swinging her legs over the side of the bed. He tries halfheartedly to stop her, but he feels weak as he looks into her face.

"I'm fine, Elena, I just thought-" his voice breaks a bit, and he hates himself for not being strong for her, for not handling this better, but keeps going anyway, because it feels like a betrayal to lie to her now, after all of this. "I thought maybe you wouldn't wake up," he finished, and his voice is hoarse like hers.

Then Elena does something he'd never expected, never even imagined. She climbs into his lap like a child, wrapping her arms around his neck and placing her head in the hollow between his shoulder and cheekbone. "I'm awake now," she says, and sighs against his throat. He can feel her breath there, and it feels like a gift.

Every place that she is touching him seems to be lit on fire, and he can't stop his arms from locking around her. The tears have dried in tracks on his face, and he's sitting there an hour later, Elena still huddled in his arms, when Stefan walks in.

Damon's arms tighten around Elena instinctively, and Stefan's eyes flash once before retaining their cold, calm gaze.

"Is she awake?" He asks, quietly.

Elena didn't stir, and Damon could tell from the slow, steady beat of her heart that she had fallen asleep.

"She was awake, earlier. She's tired," he says, almost defensively. He looks up at his brother with confidence and fierce determination.

"How was she?'"

"She was all right. Better than me." He doesn't drop his gaze from Stefan's face.

Stefan takes a step toward him, and Damon growls low in his throat. Stefan holds his hands out in defense, but Damon can't help the words that snarl out of him.

"If you try to take her from me, I'll kill you."

Stefan smiles, and it was an awful smile, full of rage and loss, and for the first time since Stefan had entered the room, Damon can see that his brother's face looks lined and tired, his eyes wild and bloodshot.

"Is she yours now?" Stefan asks, his voice so quiet and so calm it's an eerie whisper.

Damon can't speak, can't take his eyes from his brother's face, because he's sorry but not sorry, guilty but not guilty. _If Elena wakes up now_, he thinks, _if she wakes up now and chooses Stefan, I'll kill them both_, and the thought burns in his brain, because it is both awful and true. He knows the last words that Elena spoke to him before her death were that she was choosing Stefan, but that all seems so long ago now, so long before she woke up alive and Elena, before she crawled into his lap and let him hold her for hours, fell asleep in his arms like a child. Damon thinks she might never be his, no matter how much he wants it, but now he'll never let her go.

"No," he says, finally, "but I'm hers."

Stefan smiles that shadow of a smile again. "So we are here again, brother. A century later, and here we are."

"Here we are," Damon repeated.

"If she contacts me, if she gives me any idea that she's unhappy, I'll come for her."

"You can try," Damon says, and he means it. He'll kill his baby brother for this girl, this waif sleeping in his arms, and he's ashamed, but it's true.

Stefan doesn't try to argue anymore. He doesn't try to touch Elena. He's gone from the room before Damon can blink. Damon drops his eyes to Elena's face, and he hates himself for every thought he has about imprisoning her, keeping her with him always.

When Elena opens her eyes and smiles at him, he's thinking that if he was forced to let her go again he'd take off his ring and watch the sun rise, just the way he'd wanted before his brother had forced him into immortality.


	3. Chapter 3

_Author's Note:_

_To readers, if I have any - this is my first Vampire Diaries fanfiction. I read the original book series when I was about 9 years old and I've loved Damon ever since, so I hope I can do him justice - this Damon is based on the Damon in the television show, basically because I love Damon and Elena's chemistry in the show and I think Damon is a lot more human in the show. This fanfiction will be multi-chapter but probably not terribly long, because it's based on a dream I had that I thought would make a very dark and interesting Delena smut fic. It's turned a lot fluffier than I imagined so far, but the angst is coming, no worries. Also, more smut! Thanks for reading if you are._

Most of the time, Damon feels like he is living in a dream. The only way he knows it is real because never in his wildest fantasies would he have been able to imagine this.

It strikes him most in the morning, when he's drinking his scotch by the fire and Elena comes in, wearing one of his shirts, her legs long and tan, her hair mussed and curly. She's given up straightening her hair in the two months that she's become a vampire, and Damon of three years ago would have surely been struck by how much like Katherine she looked. Present Damon can only stare at her, shocked by her natural, graceful beauty, his heart swelling so much with love he thought it might burst.

The very idea that Elena is with him, actually living in his house, sleeping in his arms every night, baffles him sometimes. In fact, the past two months have been something similar to a drug induced blur, but his drug of choice hadn't been cocaine or heroin, but pure Elena.

She had woken up in his arms at the hospital and said six words that had changed his entire life.

"I'm thirsty. Can we go home?"

It was as simple as that. She hadn't mentioned Stefan's name, hadn't asked about Alaric or Klaus, had just looked up at him with big brown eyes and asked if he would take her home.

Damon hadn't even thought about taking her back to her house. He'd taken her to the Salvatore mansion right away, and Elena hadn't spoken on the ride there, hadn't argued, hadn't asked him where the hell he was going or what the hell he was doing. Damon wasn't sure if it was because she had drowned less than twelve hours ago or because she was so weak and thirsty for blood she couldn't complain, but he wasn't going to ask. He was ashamed of his thoughts but he wanted her to need him, wanted to take care of her. The old Elena would say that it was masochistic, but he couldn't bring himself to care. This was still Elena, even if she was changed, because he could tell by her soft smile, the warmth still in her brown eyes, even after death, and he still loved her almost more than he could bear.

He'd given her warmed human blood from the freezer, covered her with a blanket by the fire, and sat with her. She hadn't talked much, but she had smiled at him while drinking her scotch glass full of blood, and those quiet moments with her were some of the best in his long, long life.

She fell asleep there by the fire while he was heating up another mug of blood for her, and he carried her to the guest bedroom, feeling lightheaded, giddy, drunk although he hadn't had a drop of scotch in days.

He'd been lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering if the last few hours had actually happened or if it had been some kind of hallucination, some kind of grief-induced fever dream, and instead of lying a few hundred feet away Elena was lying on a cold metal table in the morgue, when Elena slipped in between the sheets. He hadn't heard her or sensed her until she was lying warm and naked against his arm, and his heartbeat went from normal to galloping in a split second.

"Elena," he said, and she silenced him with her mouth, and it was soft and sweet and completely different from what he imagined. He'd had hundreds, thousands of fantasies where Elena was naked in his bed, but none of them had begun like this, with her mouth so soft, her hands resting so gently on his chest.

His conscience told him to stop her, that she wasn't herself, that she needed to think about things, but everything in him was crying out for her, had been crying out for her for what seemed like forever, and he couldn't stop his hands from sliding down her back to her hips, her skin like fire under his hands.

When her hand slid down to his cock it was exactly like in his fantasies, sure and confident, and when he took in a sharp breath she smiled at him, and her sweet and sexy smile made him stop her hand.

"Elena," he said, almost gasping with the effort it took not to have his hands all over her, "maybe we should-"

Elena put her finger on his lips. "I love you, Damon," she said, and they were simple words, really, but tears pricked at Damon's eyes because he had always thought that happiness like this wasn't possible for monsters like him. In spite of what he'd told Stefan, he'd always thought he was damned, but if this wasn't heaven he didn't think he'd want to be saved. He'd prefer to be damned.

Then she straddled him, took him into her, and she was tight and wet and still so warm, and for the first time in a century Damon was making love instead of fucking, looking into her eyes and smiling, touching her face, kissing her soft mouth, and when she comes she arches her back and moans his name and that part, at least, is exactly how every fantasy had ended, how every time he'd been fucking some vapid blonde and the only way he'd been able to come is to think of Elena moaning his name. Even then he'd thought of owning her, of overcoming her, but it was she that was overcoming him, and when he came inside her he wondered if anything in the rest of eternity would top this moment

Only when she's sleeping again, curled up against him like a cat, can he look down at her face, brush the hair from her face. Only then can he say it. "I love you, Elena," and she murmurs and snuggles closer into him, and instead of thinking that he'll kill her if she ever left he's thinking he hopes she kills him if she goes, because she'll leave nothing behind if she leaves him now. Everything he has ever been, everything he is, is hers.

Two months of making love (and a good bit of fucking, he won't mince words) later, and he is still hers, still helpless to her, because she's everything, and at the end of the day all Damon can be is lovesick.

So when she asks him a favor, when she shyly but wantonly strides in wearing his shirt and nothing else, when the very sight and smell of her makes him hard and she straddles his lap, looking down into his eyes and teasing him by moving her hips over his, he would have rather cut his own throat than say no.

He would regret that decision, maybe for the rest of his life.


	4. Chapter 4

The night it happens, the night Damon indulges her, he's drunk by the time they get to Mystic Grill because it's killing him how excited Elena is.

She's putting rollers in her hair and dancing around in the skimpiest red dress he's ever seen her wear. Elena as a vampire is still sweet, still lovely, but all of her inhibitions are gone. Some of the things she'd done in bed with him he would have never imagined she'd do. Once he had asked her if she had ever done anything like that with Stefan, and when she had only winked at him, he'd wanted to find his brother in whatever town he was brooding in and rip his head from his shoulders. Now, what Elena was asking of him was near cruelty, but of course, she didn't think of it that way because he indulged her so quickly, with only a moment's hesitation.

She's pouting at him as he's drinking. "Don't you think this will be fun, baby?"

And her calling him baby is only loosening the knot in his stomach ever so slightly, so he throws back another Scotch and water, minus the water. "Sure. I think it'll be a blast."

She's there, then, snaking around him like a belly dancer, and the sight of her moving like that makes him instantly hard in spite of the gnawing in his gut. "Thank you for doing this for me. I've always wanted to," she whispers, and kisses him hard on the mouth, and he can taste sweet mint and the couple of tequila shots she's thrown back and suddenly he wants her so bad he can barely stand it. He places one big hand on her hipbone, pulling her against him, but she darts away from him, moving almost bonelessly, laughing at him.

"Not yet! Save that for later," she laughs, and goes into the bathroom to finish her makeup.

As she goes away he watches her ass bouncing in the red fabric that barely covers her, in fact doesn't quite cover her, because he can see the edge of the lacy white boyshorts she's wearing just underneath the hem, and he wants to go after her, edge his thigh between her knees to spread her legs, rip her panties off and fuck her over the bathroom counter so that he can see her half made up face in the mirror, see her lipstick red mouth open and panting, but he knows she wouldn't like it, knows that would ruin all her plans, and the thought of said plans makes him toss back another scotch before she comes out in her sky high heels and red dress, her face made up just enough to make her stunning rather than just naturally beautiful. She smells like coconut and mint leaves and Damon thought no man in the world had a snowball's chance in hell of resisting her tonight.

That thought makes him want another scotch, but she's pulling his hand, leading him out the door and into the limo she's been specific about renting. He knows he's already had too much to drink when he doesn't quite remember getting to the bar, only remembers Elena nibbling at his ear, kissing his neck. He's not seen her so worked up in the whole three months they've been living together, and something about it makes him make a beeline to the bar when they get there. He orders Elena a shot of tequila and himself a double scotch, and before he can even get the drinks back to the table, Elena is chatting up a couple of boys at the pool table. Damon throws back the scotch and then, after a moment's hesitation, the tequila, also. He's sure she'll have no problem getting drinks tonight.

He sits at the table and watches Elena bending over the pool table to make a shot, watches the two boys watching the way her skirt rode up over her ample hips and ass, and suddenly he wants to vomit, and he's not sure if it's from the alcohol or the jealousy that flipping his stomach.

Before he knows what he's doing, he's standing behind Elena, molding his body to hers and speaking directly in her ear. "You're holding the stick all wrong, sweetheart. Let me show you."

And for an instant, Elena goes limp and lets him bend her over, position her hands, but then suddenly the pool stick is between them and her brown eyes are flashing at him. She's pretending to be angry but Damon knows her well enough to know she's laughing inside, and so he goes off to the table after hailing the waitress for another set of drinks, a martini for Elena, this time. He finds a bit of satisfaction in the fact that Elena moves on from those two boys, the ones who have started averting their gazes from her because Damon Salvatore is no one they'd want to piss off, but soon she's at the bar. She's twisted toward an older and more handsome fellow, and as she laughs and flirts and places her hand on the man's knee, Damon wants to put the little swords speared through the olives in Elena's martini through his eyeballs.

Instead, he throws back another double scotch, and his head feels delightfully light by the time Elena invites him and the handsome stranger into the limo.

Elena glamours the man, but only a little. He's smitten by her so it doesn't take much. In the limo, she swings her legs over the man's (his name is Steve or Greg or something equally douchey) and rests her back against Damon. Damon's glad of this because she can't see the way Damon holds his face in his hands, and she's not paying enough attention to feel his harsh, short breaths. Damon is trying his best to reign in the monster, but it's all he can do not to rip the man's head off his shoulders as he sees him place a hand high up on Elena's long, tanned thigh.

Just as he's about to tell Elena he isn't sure if he can do this, they are home and he's following Elena inside and she, wonderful girl, makes him a much needed double scotch without even a hint of water. Doing this sober, Damon thought as Elena coaxed the stranger into the master bedroom, would be completely impossible.

He stands outside the bedroom a moment, bracing his hand on the doorframe because the scotch had made him unsteady, and he felt as if his entire body was vibrating. Of all the things Damon had done in his life for women (and he wasn't ashamed to say there were quite a few), he felt as if this was the absolute hardest, but making Elena happy had become his new goal in life sometime ago.

He takes in a deep breath and walked into the bedroom. Although he'd been attempting to prepare himself for weeks, he is still unprepared for the scene ahead of him.

Elena has shed her skimpy red dress and it lies on the floor like a snake skin. She is lying horizontally across the big bed, near the edge, and although if she'd been alone her feet would be dangling instead they are hooked around the stranger's broad shoulders, and he is face deep in that heavenly place Damon had spent hours and hours exploring.

Damon had been in his fair share of threesomes and orgies of all shapes and sizes, in several countries and with several combinations of gender, but watching Elena's face contort and her pink tongue coming out to wet her lips made his head ache with a black rage that was only dulled slightly by the alcohol.

She sees him in the doorway, smiles at him and beckons him over with one finger, and like a man underwater Damon walks to her. When he gets closer, he notices the fang marks on the man's neck, the slow trickle of blood. Damon gets on the bed and kisses Elena, cupping one of her breasts and tugging the nipple ever so slightly, just the way she liked. She moans into his mouth and Damon thinks for the first time that night that maybe this would be all right.

Then he feels Elena shift on the bed and hears her gasp. He lifts his head and moves away from her as the stranger lifts Elena's legs and slides his cock into her. Later, Damon would think that maybe it wasn't that action in itself, maybe it hadn't been the stranger but maybe it had been Elena's "oh" of surprise and pleasure, maybe it had been the way she tilted her hips up to help him angle inside of her.

At the time, he doesn't think, just feels rage boil through him like lit fire, and the monster comes.

Damon had never been a ripper, like Stefan. Damon had always been a swift, silent killer, draining his victims or snapping their necks, saving them the pain and horror of an animalistic, bloodlust kill. Now, Damon moves like a panther, sinking his fangs deep and almost ripping the stranger's throat out. Blood spurts over Elena and the white sheets, and Elena's screaming finally brings Damon back to himself.

She had scrambled back across the bed, holding the bloody sheets to her, but when he looks at her, she screams again and threw the sheets in a ball at him, running out of the bedroom into the guest room and slamming the door.

He doesn't go after her right away, but looks down at the poor stranger bleeding to death on his bedroom floor. Guilt washing over him, he leans down and snaps the stranger's neck, ending his gurgling and bleeding.

He takes off his bloody shirt, washes his face, trying to sober up somewhat and think of what he would say to Elena. He feels guilt, but it was far away. He felt as he always did after a kill - businesslike. Now there was how to clean up, how to dispose of the body. He dispose of the body, makes a note to himself to call the housecleaner in the morning. Damon had been a killer for far too many years to begin mourning over it right away.

What he does mourn, when he knocks on the guest bedroom's door, is the fear in Elena's trembling voice. "Go away!"

He rests his forehead against the cold wood. "Please, Elena. Please, let me in." He waits for a moment, and then says, "I love you."

After a moment that seems to Damon like an hour, she opens the door a crack. Her hair is wet; she obviously showered while he was out, but tear tracks streak down her face. "Why did you do that?" She asks, her voice weak and petulant.

Damon heaved a heavy sigh. "Can I come in?"

She moves aside and opens the door wide reluctantly, sitting down on the bed with her legs crossed. He comes toward her and she winces away from him and it broke his heart, her fear of him, and suddenly, he knew it wasn't rage that had made him kill that man. It hadn't been anger or jealousy that had prompted the monster at all. It had been how much it hurt. The pain had been burning in his chest, in his gut, all night, and the way Elena had arched up, the way she hadn't even been looking at Damon, had speared right through him. Because, deep down, Damon doesn't feel as if Elena chose him. He isn't sure that she ever would have, had she not become a vampire. Even if she had been awake when Stefan had entered the hospital room, he isn't sure that she would have chosen him.

He doesn't know how to say this to her, so he sits on the edge of the bed, a clear distance away from her, and he looks at her even though he wishes he didn't have to, because he doesn't want to see the fear and sorrow in her face. He doesn't want to see that she thinks he's a monster, but most of all, he doesn't want her to see that he's still human, that she can hurt him, that she did hurt him.

Before he can speak, before he can tell her anything, she furrows her brow at the look on his face and she moves toward him, crawling into his arms just as she had at the hospital, and she looks into his eyes and anything he has planned to say, any wall he has planned on putting up, is destroyed.

He feels the tears welling behind his eyes and he hears himself say hoarsely, "I'm sorry for what I did, Elena. I'm sorry for what I am. But more than anything else, I'm yours."

"Of course you are," she croons, stroking the hair at the nape of his neck, "and I'm yours."

And Damon buries his face in her hair and even while she's in his arms, even while she's whispering comforts in his ear, he doesn't believe it, not for one second.


	5. Chapter 5

Elena's transition from human to vampire had been surprisingly easy. Under Damon's watchful eye, she had fed directly from humans without losing control, and although his presence made it easier, Elena thought maybe that was the easy part, for her. She had never had violent tendencies, had always hated hurting people.

Elena's problem was what it had been before she'd matured after her parent's died: controlling her impulses and emotions. It was true, being a vampire heightened everything - her feelings for Damon, intense as they were during her human life, were tenfold. She felt as if she could barely breathe without him close to her. She wanted him all the time, and for the first month she'd been a vampire, they had not seen the sunlight outside of what streamed in through the window in Damon's bedroom.

She'd wanted to be pleasured by two men, had dreamed about it in her adolescent fever dreams since she was fourteen, and although wild horses couldn't have drug it out of her, for the better part of two years when she woke up flushed and with her body aching, those dreams had been about Stefan and Damon instead of two handsome strangers. On impulse, she had asked Damon about it, and although she could read the reluctance on his face, she'd been selfish.

She really didn't know how she had been surprised when Damon had murdered that man. All night she had seen the anger and jealousy brewing in him, and when he came to her afterward, slinking to her like a dog with his tail between his legs, she could see through the rage and bloodlust to the hurt underneath, and she was instantly sorry. Sorry she had asked him, sorry she had hurt him, sorry she had been afraid of him.

Elena's worst fear was hurting those that she loved, and ever since she had woken up in that hospital room with Damon standing over her, staring down at her with anguished blue eyes, her feelings for him had bloomed into a love almost unmanageable. She remembered a ghost of this feeling when she and Stefan had started up, remembered thinking about him all the time, wanting him all the time. She had loved Stefan, but only in the way a girl could love, in the way a child could love.

Her attraction to Damon had always been like a moth to a flame, but beyond the physical he had wormed his way inside her over the past two years, had made her want to save him, made her dream about kissing that grinning mouth, made her want to be the reason his blue eyes danced, had made her heart hurt when he'd touched her face, when he told her he loved her but he knew she'd always choose Stefan. In life, she'd never even considered not choosing Stefan. She'd been afraid to, afraid that she'd change her mind. After these months with Damon, Stefan seemed like a distant, fond memory. She could vaguely recall his green eyes, his hands on her waist. his surprisingly honest, open smile.

But Elena knew the only person to ever pull Damon back from the brink was his brother. And Damon was sinking. Ever since that night, he'd been drinking too much, not feeding enough. Elena had even tried to entice him with a blonde at the Mystic Grill, willing to flip the threesome so that it would interest him instead of her, and Damon had drank listlessly from the girl's wrist, smiling at Elena, only having eyes for her.

He didn't follow her around like a puppy, nothing that obvious, but she felt his eyes on her, always. He had his hands on her all the time, touching her calf while they sat on the couch, his hand on the nape of her neck as they sat at the bar.

One night, they'd gone to the movies, and Elena had made a flippant remark about the lead character looking a bit like his brother. Damon had nodded, nonchalantly, and taken her hand. Elena hadn't thought about it at all until after they'd made love and she woke up and found Damon by the fire, drinking bourbon too quickly for it to just be a nightcap.

Elena had made herself a drink and sat next to him, curling up her legs underneath her. Tonight, he didn't try to touch her, and when he looked at her, his blue eyes were hazy with bourbon. "Are you still in love with my brother?" He asked, without preamble and a bit unsteadily, and Elena was so shocked she couldn't speak.

His blue eyes flashed once, twice, like summer lightning, and then he grinned a bitter half smile and clinked her glass with his own. "To Stefan," he said, and downed the rest of his bourbon in an instant. He stood up and left the room before Elena could think of what to say.

She'd found him in bed, and she curled up next to him like always, put her head on his chest, and he was pretending to be asleep but she heard his heart pounding too hard against her ear, and she felt like he was pulling away from her, felt like he was teetering on the edge of the abyss he'd been in after Katherine had come back and destroyed him, and sadness came over her like a wave. She rolled away from him, close to the edge of the bed, and when she woke up with his arms wrapped around her, she was so grateful that tears pricked her eyes.

The next day, Elena had tried to banter with him, tried to get a rise out of him, but he had deferred to her. She examined his face when he wasn't looking, found that he looked tired, as if he wasn't sleeping, but when she asked him what was wrong he smiled at her, touched her face, told her nothing could ever be wrong if she was with him.

His sweet words were total bullshit, and Elena knew it, but she couldn't bring herself to call him out. She knew this was her fault, and she would do anything to take it back. She didn't know how to reach him now. She didn't know how to make him let her in again.

So she acted on impulse, did the only thing she could think of.

She dialed a familiar number and when a familiar voice picked up the line, she said, "Stefan? Would you come?"


	6. Chapter 6

Stefan had only asked a few, perfunctory questions, always calm and quiet, always the opposite of the ripper he had been years before. Elena was grateful that Stefan didn't ask why Damon was sinking, only about the symptoms themselves, because her face was blushing red just talking to him.

Damon was too busy with his own thoughts to notice Elena's nerves the next day. She wondered how he would react, if he would be angry, if he would be surprised. She couldn't imagine he'd be happy to see his estranged brother.

Damon had headed out to the blood bank to replenish their stocks when Stefan came in the door.

Elena was sitting near the fireplace, drinking a bourbon to calm her nerves even though she hated the way it tasted, the way it burned down her throat.

"I thought about knocking," Stefan said, almost awkwardly, "but it is my house."

Elena started at the sound of his voice, and when she stood up to meet him, she took in his clean, soap smell.

Stefan, for once, didn't look calm and confident, but nervous, awkward standing in his own living room. He smiled at her hesitantly. "You look beautiful, Elena," he said.

At the sound of her name in his smooth, clear voice, all her human memories came flooding back, and her heart swelled. Vampire impulses were so hard to control, and Elena was too young not to give in. She went to him and before she knew what she was doing she had her hands in his hair, pulling him down to her mouth.

Elena Gilbert had been blessed with many gifts. She was beautiful and intelligent and had grown a maturity that most girls her age took years to get.

In thirty seconds, Elena would have come to her senses, apologized to Stefan, explained that she was having trouble controlling her impulses, and backed far away from him until Damon returned. But the one gift she had not been bestowed with was luck.

She wasn't allowed thirty seconds before Damon came in the door.

She felt his presence like a wind and she broke apart from Stefan's mouth with an audible smack.

"Damon," she began, and then her voice broke when she saw him standing there, holding a box of blood, his arms sagging as if it had suddenly become too heavy for him. Elena thought she would never forget the stark pain and loss in his too blue eyes, not if she lived a hundred years.

The next thing she knew, the box had skidded across the hardwood floor, bags of blood scattering all over. She could hear a low growling sound like a diesel engine and it took her a moment to realize the sound was coming from Damon's throat, and then she saw the wood splinter from the wall behind her and turned around to realize that Damon had Stefan by the throat and he was snarling and snapping at him like an animal.

Stefan didn't fight back, just stood there, looking at his brother with cold, calm indifference, but Elena became concerned that Damon might kill him when blood began to seep from under Damon's hand, as if his fingernails were digging holes into his brother's flesh.

"Damon!" She screamed. "Stop it! I invited him here!" He didn't change, didn't stop the low growl in his throat, until Elena said, "I want him here!"

Slowly, Damon released his brother's throat and backed away from him. He smiled at his brother, that bitter half smile that Elena had once thought so sexy and that now broke her heart. "Congratulations, Stefan. It's you. It's always been you."

Stefan didn't speak, just looked at his brother with green eyes that appeared indifferent but Elena knew were concerned.

Damon turned to walk out the door, and Elena grabbed him by the arm. "Damon-" she said, again, feeling stupid and helpless, and when he looked down at her her breath caught in her throat at the pain blazing in his eyes like blue flame. Then he swallowed hard and shrugged her hand off.

A wall came up over his eyes, masking the pain with coldness, his eyes turning darker instead of the white blue they were when he was upset. "It's all right, Elena. You've made your choice."

With that, he walked out the door, with Elena protesting behind him.

Four hours later, Damon was blissfully, mercifully drunk on the floor of the Mystic Grill, drifting in and out of consciousness. He blearily remembered his hand down the pants of a pretty little brunette in the women's bathroom, remembered the way her blood had tasted like appletinis. He thought he might have called her Elena and she had slapped him and forced him out of the bathroom, but that might have been another girl. He seemed to remember a blonde, but he thought maybe he just fucked her up against the bathroom door and drained her not to death, but enough so she would pass out and stop screaming in pleasure.

He heard his name from very far away, he guessed up at the bar, so he struggled to listen.

"Damon? Oh yeah, he's here. On a bender, for sure."

It was a male voice...Matt, he thought, another poor slob that Elena had used up and thrown away, and the thought of her put a spear of pain in his chest so deep it took his breath. "I would like to order another bourbon!" He said, and he was surprised at how clear the words were in spite of the room spinning around him. He'd probably spent upwards of five hundred dollars in this little bar where the most expensive drink was fifteen bucks, and that was just on the alcohol he had drank, not counting the appletinis and cosmopolitans he'd been buying his new lady friends.

"I think you're cut off, pal," he heard a voice say, and then he sees Matt's face above him.

"I can't be cut off," he mumbled, but allowed Matt to help him up, to hoist himself under Damon's shoulder for support.

"How about I take you home? Elena called; she's worried about you."

Damon scoffed. "Worried. I'm sure she's worried herself right into my brother's bed by now. Take me to the bar, you poor bastard. I'll give you a hundred bucks."

Matt bore this amicably enough but Damon found himself led toward the exit instead of the bar and then he didn't remember getting to Matt's truck but suddenly he was there, his head lolling against the seat.

"Guess you and Elena had a fight, huh?" Matt's voice was surprisingly a comfort rather than an annoyance, and Damon was suddenly glad that he was taking him home instead of kicking him out into the street.

"Nothing to fight about. She isn't mine." Melancholy took him over like an ocean wave, and it hit him that for once, Damon wasn't jealous of Stefan because he was winning. Damon wasn't hurt because he was second best. He was jealous, sure, and angry, but above all of that he felt as if he might be dying, as if his organs were turning into liquid within him because every part of him hurt, every part of him cried out for Elena, and it occurred to him that this might be the first time he had actually had his heart broken instead of just a competition lost, an infatuation disillusioned.

Suddenly Damon felt sick. He asked Matt to pull over, and when Damon fumbled to open the door, Matt reached over and pushed it open as Damon vomited blood and bourbon onto the shoulder. Damon thought it was probably the first time in fifty years he had thrown up from drinking too much. He was pretty sure the last time was when he'd challenged a human Irishman to a drinking contest in Dublin and even with his vampire constitution, he'd lost by a long shot.

The truck was moving again and Matt's voice seemed to be coming from far away.

"Elena gets under your skin, man. She burrows under there like a tick and between me and you, I can tell you she'll be there forever. I still think about her, sometimes, when I'm alone, and wonder what might have happened had you Salvatores not breezed into town." His words were a little bitter but Matt was smiling, and Damon was suddenly very grateful.

If not for Matt, he was sure he'd be lying in the gutter somewhere, babbling incessantly and incoherently about how his brother always won. Either that or sleeping it off in a pile of bodies somewhere, too drunk to not get caught and thrown in jail until, embarrassingly, Stefan or Elena could compel someone to forget about it and let him out.

"Thank you," he said, clapping a hand on Matt's shoulder, and by the time he said that, Matt was leading him into the Salvatore boarding house and Damon was praying that Stefan and Elena were sleeping off their love fest somewhere instead of waiting for him at the door.

As usual, his prayers went unanswered, and Elena was at the door, her brow furrowed and brown eyes shining with tears. Damon wanted to scream, but at the sight of her he couldn't do anything but hang his head and pray that she couldn't see the tears welling behind his eyes. It was pathetic enough him being all but carried home by her ex-boyfriend.

He managed to stumble inside mostly by himself, and he used the walls to make it to his bedroom, leaving Elena at the door with Matt. As he went, he heard him say "He's pretty bad, Elena..." and all his good thoughts about Matt dissipated. "Traitor," he mumbled as he went face down on the bed and thankfully, into blissful oblivion.

When he woke up, sunlight was streaming down onto his face and the spear of pain in his head when he opened his eyes was near unbearable. Fucking Irishman, he thought, before he came to, and then he realized it wasn't fifty years ago in Dublin but 2012 and he was hungover in his own bed instead of an Irish hostel. Then the memory of Elena passionately kissing his brother as he walked into the house came back to him and he wished it was fifty years ago, before he'd ever met that doppelganger who had stolen her way into his heart in a way that even Katherine never had.

Said doppelganger was sitting next to him on the bed, Indian-style, her arms crossed over her chest and her brow furrowed not with concern this time, but what might have been anger.

Anger was not an unfamiliar look to Damon on Elena's face, but for the last three months she had been nothing but sweet and wonderful, at least when she wasn't fucking a stranger or kissing his brother, so it was unexpected. He opened his mouth to ask her why she wasn't in Stefan's room, but before he could speak Elena slapped him hard across the face, shooting darts of pain through his poor, hungover head.

He looked at her, finally fully awake, his eyes wide with shock. "What the hell was that for?"

"I can smell pussy all over you!" She spat at him, scrambling off the bed.

Damon struggled to sit up, still in shock from the blow to his head. "Well, that's a little crude, isn't it?"

She went on her tirade, pacing back and forth, her hair flying around her face. "I'm here all night crying, worried about you, waiting for a text, a phone call, and you come home smelling like cheap perfume and God only knows what you've been doing-" she pauses and then looks at him, brown eyes flashing with anger. "or who you've been doing."

For a moment, Damon can only look at her. She's...jealous? Actually, truly jealous? The idea makes him want to laugh because it's so ridiculous and also makes his heart pathetically light. It also sort of pisses him off. "Last I saw of you was a foot down my brother's throat, Elena, so I don't really see where you get off-"

"Only because you wouldn't listen to me!" She screamed at him. "I tried to say I was sorry; I tried to tell you I didn't choose Stefan!"

"What?" Damon couldn't believe his ears. He struggled to an upright position and the way the room tilts makes him realize he's still a little drunk.

"I didn't choose Stefan, you idiot. I chose you. I chose you in the hospital because you were there and I could remember all the things you said to me, all the things you compelled me to forget, and because I love you, Damon. I love you, and last night you were fucking someone else!" The anger in her voice broke then, and tears streaked down her cheeks, and Damon wanted to stake himself right then and there for making her cry.

His heart soared with hope and love and he has never felt his chest so full. She turned away from him and Damon grabbed for her hand. He pulled her toward the bed, took her chin in his hand and made her look at him.

"Elena, all I want is you. I've never wanted anyone as much as I want you."

She was crying and her mouth was trembling as she spoke, and it was not anger but hurt that was in her words. "Then why did you leave me last night, Damon? Why did you go around with other girls?"

His heart broke at her tears, at the waver in her voice, at how incredibly young she sounded, and when she let him take her into his arms, he was grateful.

"I saw you with Stefan and I thought you had chosen him, Elena. Before you...died, before you came back to me, you told me you never unfelt for him, that you chose him, and I thought maybe being with me was just...I don't know, a brief lapse in judgment."

Elena scoffed, but didn't interrupt him.

"I went to the bar because I couldn't stand to be here. I couldn't stand to see you with him, to know that you had chosen him. I saw you kissing him, Elena, and I wanted to die. I should have stayed; I should have listened to you, and I'm sorry."

Elena looked up at him. "What if I don't forgive you?"

Damon could see that she was wavering, could see that she wanted to, but her words took his breath anyway. "Then I guess you'll have to stake me," he said, and Elena laughs and kisses him, but he wonders if she'd laugh if she knew how true that was.


End file.
